Year later, SDSU gets another crack at Utah

San Diego State head coach Brady Hoke keeps his football program sealed up tighter than a submarine 800 feet below the surface. So when he called out his team publicly after last year’s 38-7 loss to Utah in Salt Lake City, people on the outside — and inside — took notice.

Three game-day questions

Each Saturday, beat writer Kevin Gemmell asks three questions pertinent to the game of the day. Look for the answers on Sunday.

Can the Aztecs continue their impressive play coming off a loss?

SDSU has not lost back-to-back games this season and has played two of its best games following losses.

Can the Aztecs produce touchdowns in the red zone?

SDSU has produced 22 touchdowns in 43 red-zone opportunities. Brandon Sullivan's 1-yard touchdown streak the last three games has helped raise that number.

Can the Aztecs break one INT streak and keep another going?

SDSU's defense has logged an interception in eight straight games, but quarterback Ryan Lindley has also thrown at least one interception in eight straight games.

“I think it was a good thing,” said senior center Trask Iosefa. “We needed to hear it.”

Hoke said his team “flinched” when it went on the road and was overwhelmed by No. 23 Utah, falling behind 38-0 in the first half in what he would later describe as one of the worst 30 minutes of football he’d seen.

“We went up there and they knocked us off the ball and pushed us backward,” Hoke said.

As the Aztecs (7-3, 4-2 Mountain West Conference) prepare to face No. 25 Utah (8-2, 5-1) at 7 p.m. Saturday (The Mtn., 600-AM) at Qualcomm Stadium, the question on most minds is: Has the “flinch” gene been purged from SDSU’s DNA?

“I sure hope so,” said Hoke. “We’ll find out when we kick off at 7 o’clock.”

The 2010 season suggests the Aztecs are flinchers no more. Utah will be the fourth Top-25 team they’ve played this season and the Aztecs performed admirably in the previous three. They lost to Missouri (then No. 25 in the Coaches' Poll) and TCU (then No. 3) by a combined eight points and beat Air Force (then No. 23) at home for the school’s first win over a ranked opponent since 1996.

The message Hoke sent last Nov. 21 didn’t sink in immediately. The Aztecs went on the road the next week and blew a fourth-quarter lead to UNLV to end the season on a four-game losing streak. But for those who were there, it stuck with them all offseason. Linebacker Miles Burris spent this week comparing game film from last season to this season, not just for education, but for motivation.

“That’s to remember how bad it hurt to lose and remember how we got stomped on and that we did flinch,” Burris said. “We can’t do that as a team. That’s not OK. I don’t feel like we’ve flinched this year. We just have to get after everybody and realize we can play with anybody.”

After steamrollering to an 8-0 start and No. 5 national ranking, Utah slid 20 spots over the last two weeks. A 47-7 loss to TCU followed by a 28-3 loss at Notre Dame has the team many thought could challenge TCU for a conference title looking to patch holes on both sides of the ball. This is likely the last meeting between the two schools for a while. Utah will leave the MWC after this year to join the Pac-12.

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said his team might be suffering from a loss of confidence — but not to confuse that with a loss of motivation.

“We have not lost this football team,” he said. “… Every week 50 percent of the teams have to respond to losses.”

Their two losses happen to look a lot worse. The TCU blowout came at home and the Notre Dame loss to came to an unranked team most consider average at best.

“We’re facing adversity,” Whittingham said. “Everyone in the country goes through it at some point during the season. … We’ve had challenges and we have to respond.”

In the past, San Diego State would have been Utah’s bounce-back game — an easy check in the win column before closing out the season and heading off to a bowl game. But not this year. The Aztecs have proved particularly pesky to ranked teams.

“People are either taking respect from you are you are taking it from them,” Burris said. “I feel like we’ve earned a lot of respect. They are going to try to bounce back on us, but we have to hold them off and stay undefeated on our home field.”

A victory for the Aztecs — who are 4-0 at home this season — would give them five home wins for the first time since 1996. It would also be the first time in school history the Aztecs have defeated two ranked teams in the same season.

“We’ve known throughout the season and the offseason that we won’t quit,” said quarterback Ryan Lindley. “This team is a tight-knit group, a tight family, a bunch of brothers that play for each other … we’re not playing for ourselves. We’re playing for this team and everyone else who has been on this team and the legacy San Diego State football has. We understand it’s not just about us.”

The last time the Aztecs played a team from the state of Utah that was in the midst of a losing streak and bolting the Mountain West Conference at the end of the year, they had their worst performance of the year at BYU. While players still say they weren't taking the BYU lightly and felt prepared for that game, there was still a lesson to be learned.

"The senior class is going to make sure we're ready for this game," Iosefa said. "We're not going to flinch. We expect to win when we go out there."